The Propers for today are found
on Page 170-171, with the Collect first:
The
First Sunday after Easter.
The
Collect.
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LMIGHTY Father, who hast given thine only Son to die for our
sins, and to rise again for our justification; Grant us so to put away the
leaven of malice and wickedness, that we may always serve thee in pureness of
living and truth; through the merits of the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Ryan Hopkins read the Epistle which
came from the First General Epistle of Saint John, beginning at the Fourth
Verse of the Fifth Chapter:
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hatsoever is born of God
overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even
our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that
Jesus is the Son of God? This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus
Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that
beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth. For there are three that bear
witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in
one. If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater: for this
is the witness of God which he hath testified of his Son. He that believeth on
the Son of God hath the witness in himself: he that believeth not God hath made
him a liar; because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son. And
this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in
his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God
hath not life.
Deacon Striker Jack Arnold read the
Gospel for this Sunday which came from the Twentieth Chapter of the Gospel of
Saint John beginning at the Nineteenth verse:
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he same day at evening, being the
first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were
assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith
unto them, Peace be unto you. And when he had so said, he shewed unto them his
hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord. Then
said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so
send I you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto
them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted
unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.
Sermon – Time
and Action
Today’s sermon brought the Collect, Epistle and
Gospel together and is partly contained in the forewords above.
We are in the Easter Season which consists of Easter
and the following four Sundays, until we get to Rogation Sunday. This is a time we should work on
centering our lives on the central figure in our religion, Jesus Christ.
Consider these words from the
Collect:
… Son
to die for our sins, and to rise again for our justification; Grant us so to
put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that we may always serve thee in
pureness of living and truth …
God sent Jesus to be The
Christ, The Messiah, The Savior, The Lamb to be sacrificed for our sin. He gave His earthly Life, He went down
into Hell, that we might be justified before God at our accounting. Not that we might be perfect, but that
we might be accounted perfect at our judgment day. Yet we are not made perfect. Thus we must ask God’s help that we can put away the
infection, or leaven, of evil in our hearts so that we can serve the Living God
here.
Paul tells us that we must be
reborn as a new person in God. We
must put on the New Man and put the Old Man behind us. We must endeavor to leave our old
habits behind as we strive to make new practices into habits. We cannot follow the direction of Jesus
towards God without the help of the Holy Ghost. The Trinity in practice. If you believe in Jesus, you must believe in God and you can
do neither without the help of the Holy Ghost.
When Jesus came to the disciples
on Sunday evening, He breathed the Holy Ghost into their hearts. He gave the disciples the power to pass
His Forgiveness on to their followers.
As ministers of God, we follow the disciples, but we have not the power
to forgive, except as we find in the Lord’s Prayer, “forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We do have the ability to tell you that if you repent, that
is “to turn from sin and dedicate oneself to the amendment of
one's life”, then God will forgive you. Through our Lord, if you repent, He has forgiven you.
So what to take from all this?
For God so loved the world,
that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not
perish, but have everlasting life.
John 3.16
If you get that, you have the
Holy Ghost in your heart. If you
don’t open your heart so that He will breathe the breath that sends The
Comforter to you.
Bishop Ogles’ Sermon
We are oft fortunate to get
copies of Bishop Jerry’s sermon notes.
Today is one of those Sundays.
Today we get a brilliant and inspiring sermon for Easter. I beg you; take the time to read this:
Sermon Notes for 15
April 2012 Anno Domini
First Sunday after
Easter
St Andrews Anglican
Orthodox Church
The
First Sunday after Easter.
The
Collect.
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LMIGHTY Father, who hast given thine only Son to die for our
sins, and to rise again for our justification; Grant us so to put away the
leaven of malice and wickedness, that we may always serve thee in pureness of
living and truth; through the merits of the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
19 Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the
week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of
the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. 20 And when he had so said, he
shewed unto them his hands and his side. Then were the disciples glad, when
they saw the Lord. 21 Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father
hath sent me, even so send I you. 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on
them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: 23 Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto
them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained. (John 20:19-23)
It
will prosper our love and understanding of the fear the disciples experienced
following the crucifixion. Only having heard, through a veil of ignorance, the
Words of Christ that after the third day He would arise, the disciples were not
expecting the Words of Christ to become a literal fact. So they hid and cowered
behind closed doors.
While
He was yet with them, their courage never failed, but when separated from the
physical presence of Christ – they were mere cowards.
You
will note that Christ rose from the Tomb with a living body though different in
some respects than His pre-crucifixion body. He was recognizable in appearance,
but He could also pass through material barriers without any impediment.
He
came to His disciples in Peace as He always comes to us. "Peace be
unto you!"
His
glorified body still retained the scars of His sacrifice. Did you know that
when we all get to heaven, we will have perfect bodies? There shall be only One
whose body is marred from suffering – the Lord Jesus Christ.
Christ
sends us into the World as His Father had sent Him. Let us stop to contemplate
on how the Father sent the Son into the World?
1)
He came under humble circumstances having been born of a humble mother, and
laid in a wooden manger used for feeding sheep. That was appropriate for
Christ is our Bread of Life and we are the Sheep of His Pasture.
2)
Christ lived a normal life for His time and was a carpenter for his surrogate
father, Joseph. We must, likewise, labor for our daily bread.
3)
He was notable in His innocence of life. When we are notoriously wicked, the
whole world notices. But when we are humble and righteous, the world makes no
mention of it. We, too, must live lives that are righteous and above the
contempt of men.
4)
He came to set the captives free, but who are the captives? Those who are
burdened with their heavy sins – all of us. He preached and taught. Our true
testimony of Christ will likewise set the captives free. Before we can teach
others of the means of coming to Christ to lift their burdens, we must first
allow Him to lift our own unbecoming yoke and burden.
5)
He showed compassion to all, but greatest of all to sinners who KNEW they were
sinners. We must show compassion to ALL men and, especially, those who are
hopelessly drowning in a sea of sin. A drowning man flails helpless in the
briny foam, unable to save himself. That burden of throwing out the life raft
falls to us.
6)
Christ proved Himself by His works. So must we. Though we cannot perform
miracles, we have a Master who can, indeed.
7)
He changed the requirements of obedience from that of strictly adhering to
Commandments written on Stone Tables to that of the Commandment of Love written
in the soft sinews of our hearts. That which we love warrants that we commit no
sin against.
8)
He was the only Man ever born without sin, and the only One who lived a sinless
life. Thereby He was worthy to die in our stead for our sins. "For all
have sinned and fallen short of the righteousness of God' and "The wages
of sin is death." If we all have sinned, we deserved to go to the
cross instead of Christ. But He went in our stead so that we may have the
privileges of son ship with the Father as sons and daughters of God.
9)
He bore all of our sins on the cross when, at any moment, He could have come
down from the cross. He was WILLING to go all the way for us. We must be
WILLING to go all the way for Him and those He loves.
10)
He arose from the Tomb on the third day as He had promised. That gives us the
privilege to rise from our own graves if we are in Him and He in us. He is our
Ark of Salvation that shall insure our living above the floods and terrors of
this world.
11)
He ascended to the Father and there intercedes for us with Him. He has left us
as keepers of the Vineyard to labor in His stead. The teaching of the Apostles
persists today though many have waxed cold and passionless in our day. Our task
is to press on to the mark set in Christ by living a pure and clean life and
telling others about the hope that is in us in Christ Jesus.
Have
you lived the kind of life that causes men to know you belong to Christ?
On
another note:
Today
is the 100th Anniversary of the sinking of
the largest passenger liner ever to sell the seas – the RMS Titanic. It lies in
its watery grave 12,000 down at the sea bottom of the North Atlantic.
There
are thousands of strong testimonies that have survived that tragedy even if
their testators did not.
Bishop
Dennis Campbell’s Sunday Sermon
As
is oft the case, we are honored to present Bishop Dennis’ Sunday sermon
presented to his parish. Dennis
has a special sermon for the First Sunday after Easter:
How Communion Makes Us Holy
Psalm 66, 1 John 5:4-12, John
20:19-23
First Sunday after Easter
April 15, 2012
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RANT, O
Lord, that by thy holy Word read and preached in this place, and by thy Holy
Spirit grafting it inwardly in the heart, the hearers thereof may both perceive
and know what things they ought to do, and may have power and strength to
fulfill the same.
Faithfulness is the subject of the prayers and Scripture
readings for today. The Collect first declares that Christ died and rose
again to make us acceptable to God, which it calls, "justification."
It then beseeches God to enable us to put away unGodliness and serve Him in
purity of life and truth. 1 John 5 reminds us that we are not to be
worldly but are to overcome the world by faith, and John's Gospel, Chapter 20
records the appearance of the Risen Christ to His disciples, who are now
becoming Apostles commissioned to found the Church.
Purity of life, let's call it, "holiness,"
should be one of the results of receiving the Lord's Supper.
We profess that the Lord's Supper is a means of
grace, and therefore, duly and rightly receiving it makes us holy. Yet I wonder
how many understand how the Lord's Supper, or, as we like to call it,
the Holy Communion makes us holy. We can easily understand how a serious and
continuing study of the Bible makes us holy. We know that reading it puts
God's thoughts and values into us, and His thoughts and values change us by
shaping our thoughts and values. We can easily understand how prayer
makes us holy. I am not talking about simply asking God to give us
things; I am talking about prayer as we find it in the Book of Common Prayer,
and in Scripture, where it means, "worship." We can easily see
that the services of Morning and Evening Prayer faithfully lead us into
Biblical worship, and, as they are faithful expressions of Biblical truth, they
cause us to ponder Godly things. Thus, they change us in our hearts and
beings. They make us holy. We can easily see how the fellowship of
a Biblical Church can make us holy. In its worship we hear the Bible read
and proclaimed, in its prayers we are taken to the throne of grace, and in the
fellowship of our family in Christ we find acceptance, encouragement, and
love. But there is a great element of mystery surrounding the Holy
Communion. We even call the bread and the cup, "holy mysteries"
in the prayer after the Communion. So again, we ask, how does receiving
Holy Communion make us holy?
It makes us holy by causing us to remember Christ's
sacrificial death. In fact, remembering Christ's death is primary in Holy
Communion. The bread of the Lord's Table is a symbol of the Lord's body,
and by breaking and eating it we are reminded of the crown of thorns, the
scourge, the nails, and the spear, and we remember that His body was broken for
us. The wine we drink is the symbol of His blood that ran from His wounds
and was poured out for us. I stress the word "symbol" here
because the bread and wine represent the body and blood of Christ. They
never become His literal body or blood. So when the Lord Himself, still
in His physical body before the crucifixion, said, "This is my body,"
and "This is my blood, He clearly meant this bread represents and symbolizes
His body, and this wine represents and symbolizes His
blood. Remembering His death causes us to think on holy things, which,
when accompanied by Biblical faith, helps us develop holiness of life.
The Lord's Supper makes us holy by causing us to
remember that Christ's death purchased our eternal life. The Bible speaks
of two states or conditions of the souls of people in eternity. One is
called eternal death and it signifies being cut off from the presence and joy
of God forever. As the Epistle for this morning states it; "he that
hath not the son hath not life." This does not mean the soul goes
into non-existence. It means the soul goes into a state that is so
terrible and frightful that it can best be described as a living death.
We can understand this easily because we have heard of people going through
experiences in life which were so horrible they called their existence a
'living death." This, magnified beyond our ability to understand, is
the condition of those who are forever cast out of the presence of God.
The other condition of the soul in eternity is called
everlasting life, or, eternal life. Again, this refers to the quality,
rather than the quantity, of existence, and it means to dwell forever in the
immeasurable love and happiness of God. This condition of eternal life
was purchased for us by Christ. Referring again to the Epistle of 1 John
we read, "this is the record, that God hath given us eternal life, and
this life is in His son." The breaking of His body and the pouring out of
His blood was part of the way He paid the price of our sins, and purchased
eternal life for us. When we eat the bread and drink the wine of
Communion, we remember these things, and we are moved to greater faith and
faithfulness. We are made holy. This is the second major point of
this sermon; receiving Holy Communion moves us to greater faith and
faithfulness.
We are accustomed to thinking about the word,
"faith" in two ways. First we think of the act of trusting in
Christ's sacrificial death to make you right with God. The best way I can
think of to express this is to say that if anyone asks you why you think you
are going to Heaven, your answer would be, "Because Christ took my sins on
Himself and paid their penalty by dying for me on the cross, and that is why
God will let me into Heaven" Second, we think of The Faith, which means
the doctrinal content of Christianity. The right receiving of Holy
Communion increases our faith in both of these meanings. It increases our
faith in Christ as our Saviour, by helping us trust Him more. It
increases our belief that Christ died for my sins, therefore God is going to
accept me into Heaven. It also increases our understanding of The
Faith. The more we ponder the sacrifice of Christ, the more we grow in
our understanding of the whole of the Christian Faith. We grow in our
understanding of the seriousness of sin, the need for grace and justification,
the meaning and need of holy living, and the Church, and so many other
important things. We grow in faith as we receive Communion.
Yet there is a third meaning of the word,
"faith" as it is used in the Bible, and that meaning is,
"faithfulness." We could also call this, "purity of
life," or, "holiness," or "Godliness," or any number
of other things, but they all refer to living lives that are more fully
surrendered to the will of God and less occupied with the things of sin and
self. I think no one will disagree when I say that the more we realise
the wickedness of our sin, the horrors of hell, and the greatness of the
sacrifice of Christ, the more we ought to be moved to lives of holiness and
purity. The more we ought to be moved to love Christ, and devote
ourselves to Him in all things. The Lord's Supper gives us the
opportunity to think on these things, to grow in our understanding of
them. And, if we truly understand these things, and if we truly see them
through the eyes of faith as we come to the Table of the Lord, we will
naturally find ourselves moved to holiness.
I need to say one more, very important thing.
You have noticed that I keep saying things like, the Bible changes us, prayer changes
us, and Communion changes us. This is very important because we do not
change ourselves by doing these things; God changes us, and He uses these
things to do it. That's why they are known as the means, or channels, of
grace. Grace, of course means God's attitude of mercy toward us, but it
also refers to God's activity toward us as He changes and remakes us, and
causes us to walk in His ways and find our joy in Him. So, when we
worship, God works in us to heal our souls and strengthen our faith. When
we read the Bible God changes our thoughts and gives us His values. And
when we come to the Holy Table of Communion, God Himself enables us to come in
faith, and grow in faith as we remember our Saviour's loving sacrifice.
So, in the end, it is not we who make ourselves holy by coming to this Table or
doing good things. It is God who makes us holy by the means of
grace. We could say, God uses these things to draw us into Himself.
That is the real way Communion makes us holy.
Blessed Easter,
--
+Dennis
Campbell
Bishop,
Anglican Orthodox Church Diocese of Virginia
Rector,
Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
Powhatan,
Virginia
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